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What You Should Eat

And this portion of the presentation I'm going to be talking about things that you're probably eating right now or are exposed you right now that you should never touch so let's start with uh you know what? What do you eat for breakfast? Actually, this would be a great one to hear from some folks online if they could give examples of what a typical breakfast the typical healthy breakfast looks like for them that would be really useful. Um but be careful, I might rip it to pieces. Yes. Oh, um what do you eat for breakfast? This is a really important question it's supposed to be the most important meal of the day whether or not that's true is something I'll be touching upon later, but it really I think it's a great example of how you view nutrition if you start the day with a big old bowl of of cereal or oatmeal or whole grains or something that's supposed to be heart healthy big old glass orange juice is well, uh maybe with it a piece of toast on side or a whole grain bagel may with cem...

that free cream cheese or something like that on then you're you're in good company, a lot of folks do that I did that as well for a very long time unfortunately it made me fat and it makes a lot of other people fat two this is one my favorite quotes of fifty million people say foolish thing it is still a foolish thing so here's the problem what conventional wisdom including your your doctor magazines uh your friends your well meaning nutritionist wagging a finger in your face the things that most people say are healthy and what is actually healthy or completely different and that's why we're so confused so I just upon this a little bit earlier but eighty percent of your ability to lose body fat is actually determined by what you eat not what you do to your body body builders you know this very well common aphorism is six packs or carved by spoons. You know, a lot of people imagine these dudes on muscle beach you were just kind of going like this all day and eating whatever they want it doesn't really work like that, although they do eat some pretty interesting things as we'll find out pretty soon. So where do you get your dietary advice? I got it from probably a lot of the same places that most people get it today, but now I avoid all of them let's start with the government so a lot of folks will probably remember this one for those of you who are international you might not but this is what the u s government recommended a few years ago now it's now it's in the shape of a plate and it's been shifted around a little bit but it's still pretty much the same and we're the base of the pyramid is made up of six to eleven servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta that's a food group now the vegetable group three to five servings alright fruit group two to four can't really argue a whole lot with that, but that's ok milky over and cheese group I don't really know why it's called a group like that we could just the school at barry two to three servings it seems a little bit arbitrary to me meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs and nuts group proteins uh, I would not lump all those things together anymore, but they do two or three servings a day and then fats, oils and sweets use them sparingly. So basically what you're looking at is a high carb, low fat diet with some protein thrown in there and hopefully some vegetables and some fruit as well actually quite a bit of fruit, almost as much fruit as vegetables hoops what happened when we started telling people what to do with their diet but that they should eat this way? This is when the dietary guidelines for americans started to come out and be popularized on we're looking at the prevalence of obesity among u s adults twenty two seventy five years old and it basically took off we all know what happened in the past you know, twenty, thirty years if you look at pictures actually this was absolutely fascinating to me there's a facebook group of of my family reunion and it goes back teo I think the oldest one I saw was like nineteen forty eight the coolest thing this is a few weeks ago we were looking through this coolest thing is you could see the same people over time you can also see the same group of people the same families that the children in the photos become the adults than they have children and you can look at it by decade and so I was and I'm just like wow, you know, in the in the forties they all look awesome you know that their skin was clear they were you know, standing straight up and had these solemn faces but you know no splotchy skin you know there are always people who had, you know, a little pot belly or something but certainly no one who was uh obese at all and then it moves to the sixties everyone's partying were wearing totally weird clothes I see my parents and inappropriate situations and uh actually it was more of the seventies but you know the sixties seem like things were going to wrong there either people were generally pretty pretty lean and healthy skin were out there in the sun smoking stuff like that didn't seem to cause that many problems until we started hitting the seventies and then you start to see a few muffin tops and you know, people who have bizarre hair and ridiculous shirts but mostly people there still may be a little bit softer more pudgy but typically um not not in terrible shape then you hit the ease and my lord I don't know what happened but it was ugly all of a sudden these same people who before were you know, lean or on that spectrum of lean ish maybe a couple pounds overweight same group of people same genetics literally the same people same families all of a sudden you see these people who were just fat in fact like you're looking at pictures and like most of them are like what's that's kind of weird in the nineties is even worse and then you look now and it's it's most of most of the people are overweight or obese and of course some people aren't the interesting thing about this is that my my background my family on my dad's side uh my grandfather was a farmer I have he was one of seven so I have a bunch of aunts and uncles and they lead a pretty healthy lifestyle but the background in new hampshire of a lot of my family is they were actually farmers and they changed a lot of the ways that they eight farmers in general. A swell is my family and so it's kind of interesting looking back at what happened and when to the same people by doing different things. And this is, you know, one of the things that happened, everyone just kind of got fat. And now skip ahead uh, we were on a cruise ship. Ah, little more than a year ago. Left out of galveston in texas is not one of the leanest places on the planet. And pretty much every time we walked around all the heads turned and not in, like, a cool way at all, it was like we were outsiders like freaks kind of because we were so small, like we look weird because we're leaking, you know, we're thin and you just don't really see that I live in austin. You see that pretty often it's it's, pretty active people are into eating well in real food farm table stuff, but I mean, you step out of that and living in texas, things have gone wrong and what's normal now it's what's common is unfortunate and it's getting worse and that's why I do what I do if you get your advice from your doctor, I was, uh I was guilty of this as well I realized that my doctor was overweight and in fact forty four percent of doctors are overweight or obese and these are the very people who most people go to for their dietary advice and once again some doctors are wonderful people but the problem is most doctors tend to underestimate the importance of nutrition and in fact a lot of doctors who I've spoken with who I might not necessarily agree with say that diet doesn't really enter into it at all how much you weigh the health conditions you have my own like having a broken thyroid, digestive upset, weird skin problems not being able to sleep kidney stones none of these things they're related to diet you have a prescription deficiency is basically what they said to me and what they say a lot of people well most people don't understand is that the majority of doctors received just a few hours of nutritional training in medical school on this is over the course of many many years I mean doctors are just kind of like popping into school and then popping out when we're talking about a few hours that is a very very small sliver of what they learned uh and this is this is a quote actually from a doctor there a er nurse practitioner rather their practice is based on disease screening, not prevention with an emphasis on drug therapies, not nutrition and that's really what we're finding a lot today so if you get your uh your medical advice from a doctor that's wonderful if you get your dietary advice from a doctor maybe not if you get your dietary advice from the media from studies that you hear about that you're you know well meaning cousin tells you about dinner says that well what you're eating is going to stop your heart you're going to die the problem is most of these studies that we hear about are not science at all they're really not uh this is one that got me riled up a roadblock post about it a couple weeks ago this was found in forbes and there's a quote men who skipped breakfast or twenty seven percent more likely to experience heart attack or die as the result of coronary heart disease the title of that was why skipping breakfast so bad for our heart health it's like all right yeah that mouth maybe I should should eat some or cereal right then it goes on the men who skipped breakfast were more likely to be single smokers employed full time to drink more alcohol were younger and less likely to be physically active than people who ate breakfast so is it the fact that skipping breakfast is bad for you it is going to stop your heart or is it the fact that most people who skip breakfast are lazy boozers who smoke that's what we're looking at here and twenty seven person doesn't seem like a whole lot to me when you, when you add in all of those factors as well. So this is something that comes up all the time. This was on observation a ll study which which really isn't science at all the and that's what you hear of most of the time from other people that the media is screaming about this new thing, you know, eggs, they're going to stop your heart, never eat him again. And then the next week you find this this article it says the new superfood eggs eat six every day, and this stuff happens all the time and it's all nonsense. Forget about it, it's ridiculous it's not science the as I said before that, the science of nutrition is very nation. We don't understand a whole lot about it yet, and these studies are basically just completely out of control. So when you look at observation all studies, they're wonderful for developing hypotheses. When you look at different populations of people over time and compare what happens to them, you know, the amount of wheat that they eat and they're incidents of developing heart disease is a really interesting one, and in fact, the more we you eat, the more likely you're a heart will stop. This is something that was found a long time ago, but the data was thrown out and kind of ignored. I mean, to be getting more deeply into that very soon. But if you're getting your dietary advice from all these studies that are kind of like talking back and forth about nonsense, stop eat less and exercise more is kind of a recurring theme throughout all of this. No matter who we're talking to, this is, what's said. This is understood to be true, it's, very simple. You know, the news anchors are always talking about, well, it's it's, this is all you have to do. People just need to eat less that's not true it's, just not it's more complicated than that it's. Not that simple, because even the same thing like if you eat a carrot, you can compare that to a carrot. But if you eat a can of tuna, you can't compare that to a can of soda, and I'll show you why a little bit later.